XTZ Inflation Analysis · October 2026 · Supply growing · projected to keep growing

Tezos (XTZ) is mildly inflationary. Over the 90 days to Oct 18 2026 the protocol created 8,071,689 XTZ in staking rewards and buyers claimed 15,684 XTZ of old fundraiser coins, while burns removed 62,973 XTZ. Net, circulating supply grew +0.73%, the same as the monitor reads, and we expect about +0.73% again in the next 90 days. XTZ has no supply cap: the issuance rate moves with the staked share and reads 2.81% a year today.

The verdict, in one paragraph

Tezos supply grew +0.73% over the last 90 days, and the next 90 days project +0.73%. The monitor reads +0.73% for the same 90 days, a gap of 0.00 percentage points, so no warning chip is shown. Almost all of the new supply is staking reward; the burns are small, and the largest single burn of the window, 30,000 XTZ of lost rollup bonds in August, was a one-off. Tezos is a steady, low-inflation proof-of-stake chain: inflationary by design, with no unlock overhang.

Sell pressure: where new XTZ comes from

Protocol inflation is the main source, at 8,071,689 XTZ in 90 days, about 89,700 XTZ a day. Tezos pays bakers, stakers and delegators in newly created XTZ every block, and since the adaptive issuance upgrade of 2024 the yearly rate adjusts by itself to how much XTZ is staked: the more is staked, the lower the rate. About 31% of all XTZ is staked today and the chain reads a rate of 2.81% a year. The three 30-day parts of the window were close to each other (2.73M, 2.67M and 2.67M XTZ), so we carry the same 8.07M XTZ into the next 90 days. The Ushuaia upgrade of Jun 30 2026 did not change how rewards are paid, and the separate subsidy for the built-in liquidity-baking exchange has been switched off by baker vote since Jun 2 2026.

Vesting unlocks are 0. The Tezos Foundation and early-team allocations vested monthly over four years and finished in 2022, and no Tezos unlock calendar has anything left to release.

Foundation and unscheduled unlocks add 15,684 XTZ. About 19.97M XTZ from the 2017 Tezos fundraiser has never been claimed, so it is not counted as circulating. When a contributor claims, those coins enter the market. Five claims landed this window, between Jul 28 and Oct 13 2026, and about 93,500 XTZ was claimed over the last year, with at least one claim every quarter, so we expect about 23,400 XTZ in the next 90 days.

Long-term locked or bankruptcy supply is 0. No bankruptcy estate or trustee holds XTZ, and staked XTZ and rollup bonds can be withdrawn, so they already count as circulating.

Buy pressure: where new XTZ goes

There is no programmatic buyback: 0. Transaction fees go to bakers, and the part that is destroyed is the fee burn below.

The protocol fee burn removed 32,973 XTZ in 90 days, about 366 a day. Tezos destroys the storage fee paid whenever a contract writes new data and the small fee for creating a new account, which came to 23,244 XTZ. The built-in liquidity-baking exchange also destroys 0.1% of every trade by sending it to an address no one controls: 9,730 XTZ this window. We expect the same pace next.

Lost rollup bonds removed another 30,000 XTZ. Between Aug 15 and Aug 18 2026, six disputes on the Etherlink rollup ended with the losing side giving up its 10,000 XTZ bond; half went to the winner and half was destroyed. It was a one-off, so the next 90 days count 0 here.

Foundation buying is 0, and new long-term locks are 0. Staking grew by about 13.3M XTZ in the window, but staked XTZ can be unstaked and still counts as circulating, so a bigger stake does not shrink the float. It only lowers the reward rate.

Foundation and overhang

The Tezos Foundation is the one team holder we track. Its 16 known wallets (four Foundation bakers, ten delegator wallets and two new staking wallets that received 30M XTZ in early October) hold about 91.57M XTZ, up from 72.97M at the start of the window as the Foundation moved coins in and restaked them. Its last report put its XTZ at $76M on Dec 31 2025. All of these coins already count as circulating, so a Foundation sale moves XTZ between holders and adds no new supply. We read these wallets on-chain at every rebuild.

The other overhang is the 19.97M XTZ of unclaimed 2017 fundraiser coins, claimable at any time with no deadline. If the Foundation wallets fall or the unclaimed pool shrinks faster between checks, that outflow enters the Foundation and unscheduled unlocks row at the next rebuild.

How XTZ compares to other proof-of-stake Layer 1s

Tezos sits at the low end of uncapped staking chains. Its issuance falls as more XTZ is staked, the same idea as Ethereum's square-root reward curve, but Tezos pays about 2.8% a year on total supply while Cardano draws rewards from a shrinking reserve and Cosmos-style chains often print 7% or more. Tezos has no hard cap like Bitcoin and no fixed halving; supply simply keeps growing slowly.

The burn side is thin. Ethereum destroys the base fee of every transaction and Solana burns part of its fees, while Tezos burns only storage fees, new-account fees and the 0.1% exchange fee, which together cancel well under 1% of new XTZ. Unlike many newer Layer 1s, Tezos has no investor or team unlocks left, so its sell pressure is almost pure staking reward rather than vesting cliffs.

What to watch in the next 90 days

The staked share: if more XTZ is staked, the yearly rate drops below 2.81%; if stakers leave, it rises. The current upgrade proposal period ends on Oct 21 2026 with no proposal, and the next upgrade, expected to bring protocol liquid staking, needs about two more months of voting after it is proposed. Watch whether bakers vote the liquidity-baking subsidy back on, which would add new XTZ each block. Watch the 19.97M XTZ unclaimed fundraiser pool for a large claim. And watch the next Tezos Foundation report for its XTZ holdings at Jun 30 2026.

Summary

Tezos (XTZ) grew its circulating supply by +0.73% in the 90 days to Oct 18 2026 and projects about the same next, in line with the monitor. The supply comes almost entirely from staking rewards that adjust to the staked share, about 2.81% a year, while storage and exchange burns remove only a small slice. There are no vesting unlocks left; the overhangs are the Foundation's roughly 91.57M XTZ, already circulating, and 19.97M XTZ of unclaimed fundraiser coins. XTZ has no supply cap.

MrNasDog Pressure Framework analysis of XTZ, Metric 1 — Inflation. Data + explanation only. Not financial advice. Checked Oct 19 2026.